Somewhere in China in either 1944 or 1945, as a Crew Chief on a C-47 with the 322nd Toop Carrier Squadron of the 14th Air Force, I was doing routine maintenance on my ship while a Chinese crew was doing the refueling.

I had just climbed a ladder placed between the right engine and fuselage, when I noticed a Chinamen about to throw a foreign object into the right main fuel tank. I dove toward the man, yelling and cursing at the top of my voice. He tossed aside the object just as I grabbed him by the wrist and threw him back over the front of the wing, falling about 15 feet to the ground.

My yelling had not been in vain, as a Chinese Army Officer and one enlisted Chinese soldier came running up to grab the culprit. The last I saw of him he was being dragged off by the military; in a moment I heard a shot and the two military men came back alone. This is the kind of justice that was the norm during this war.

Copyright 1999 H. Thomas Flanagan